US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Gains Access To License Plate Database

Privacy is quickly becoming a thing of the past as governments and corporations are constantly watching our every move.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is the latest group jumping on the bandwagon as The Verge has uncovered a new contract which will give the agency “access to a commercially available License Plate Reader (LPR) database.”

The listing doesn’t reveal much, besides an assurance that “ICE is neither seeking to build nor contribute to a national public or private LPR database,” but the contract is likely to raise a number of concerns.

The publication reports an ICE representative confirmed the database will be provided by Vigilant Solutions which specializes in facial recognition and license plate recognition technology. The company’s website claims their database has over five billion “nationwide detections and over 150 million more added monthly.”

The company goes on to say users can search by plate and partial plate numbers to see historical data where the suspect vehicle has “been spotted in the past, whether the vehicle was present at the scene of the crime, or identify alibis and witnesses.”

Vigilant Solutions declined to confirm if it was the supplier of the database for ICE but the agency has previously “identified a number of benefits from the use of commercial LPR data” as it can help provide clues about where a subject might be located as well as “identify connections between a car and an address known for criminal activity.”

LPR technology isn’t new but the contract with ICE has a number of people worried. Jay Stanley is one such person and he studies LPRs for the American Civil Liberties Union. In a statement to The Verge, he said “There are people circulating in our society who are undocumented. Are we as a society, out of our desire to find those people, willing to let our government create an infrastructure that will track all of us?”